Fujitsu FM Towns: the Japanese computer that saw the future first

Long before the multimedia PC became a marketing slogan, Fujitsu built a machine around CD-ROM, rich sound, colourful graphics and entertainment software. The FM Towns was expensive, unusual and unmistakably ahead of its time. In 1989, the personal computer was still, for many people, a serious object. It belonged on an office desk, beside a printer, surrounded by floppy disks and manuals. It was a machine for word processing, spreadsheets, programming and business administration. Entertainment existed, of course, but it was often treated as a secondary use, something squeezed into the limits of modest graphics, tiny storage and basic sound. Then Fujitsu introduced the FM Towns, and it felt as though someone had opened a door into the next decade. This was not simply another Japanese PC. It was a multimedia computer before that phrase became fashionable. It came with a CD-ROM drive built in as standard, a powerful 386 processor, strong graphics and sound hardware, and an operating environment designed to feel more visual and approachable than the command-line computers many users knew. 

A CD-ROM machine from day one

The most important feature of the FM Towns was not hidden inside the case. It was visible from the front: the CD-ROM drive. Today that detail may seem ordinary, even quaint, but in 1989 it was a serious statement of intent. A floppy disk could hold a small program, a few documents or a modest game. A CD-ROM could hold hundreds of megabytes. That meant speech, music, photographs, animation, large databases, encyclopaedias and games with a much greater sense of scale.

Fujitsu did not treat CD-ROM as an optional luxury for wealthy enthusiasts. It made the drive part of the basic machine. That decision shaped everything about the FM Towns. Developers could assume that every owner had access to CD storage, which encouraged software that would have been impractical on floppy-based systems. The machine was not asking users to imagine a multimedia future. It was trying to deliver one immediately.

That made the FM Towns feel unusually confident. It was not a cautious computer designed to fit neatly into existing habits. It was built around a bet: that the future of personal computing would be visual, musical, interactive and media-rich.

A different kind of Japanese PC

The FM Towns arrived in one of the most distinctive computer markets in the world. Japan in the late 1980s had its own powerful domestic platforms, its own software culture and its own expectations. NEC’s PC-98 series dominated much of the business market, while companies such as Sharp, Fujitsu and Sony explored machines with stronger identities in games, graphics, education and home use.

Into that world came a Fujitsu computer with a very particular personality. The FM Towns was technically a PC, but it did not behave like a plain office machine. Its Towns OS gave users a more graphical, mouse-friendly experience. Its hardware encouraged colour, sound and motion. Its CD-ROM drive suggested a world of software that felt closer to publishing, television and the arcade than to traditional business computing.

That mixture made the machine hard to categorise. It was a home computer, but more sophisticated than many home machines. It was a games platform, but more flexible than a console. It was a serious computer, but one with a playful streak. In the best sense, the FM Towns was awkward: too ambitious to fit comfortably into one box.

Games became its public face

Although Fujitsu did not launch the FM Towns only as a games machine, games quickly became one of the clearest ways to show what it could do. The platform developed a reputation for impressive conversions, CD-audio soundtracks and versions of games that felt more polished than their floppy-based relatives. For players used to compromises, the Towns could feel luxurious.

Arcade titles, adventure games, simulations and Western computer games all found a home on the system. Names such as After Burner II, Turbo Out Run, Galaxy Force II, Lemmings, Dungeon Master, Wing Commander and Alone in the Dark helped build the machine’s reputation among enthusiasts. The point was not only that the FM Towns could run games. It was that it could make them feel dramatic.

Sound mattered. Colour mattered. The presentation mattered. A game on the FM Towns could feel less like a small program and more like a produced experience. That was precisely the direction computer entertainment would take during the 1990s, as CD-ROM drives and sound cards became common on mainstream PCs. The FM Towns simply reached that destination early.

The multimedia PC before the multimedia PC

By the mid-1990s, computer shops were full of “multimedia PC” language. Manufacturers promoted CD-ROM drives, speakers, sound cards, video clips, educational discs and encyclopaedias as if the industry had suddenly discovered that computers could appeal to families as well as office workers.

Fujitsu had already acted on that idea years earlier. The FM Towns understood that storage, sound and visuals were not decorative extras. They were central to how ordinary people might want to use a computer. A child exploring an educational disc, a student watching an animation, a player listening to CD-quality music in a game, a hobbyist experimenting with graphics — these were not fringe use cases. They were signs of where computing was going.

This is why the FM Towns remains such an interesting machine. It did not merely have advanced specifications. It had a coherent vision. It imagined the computer as a media device, a learning device, an entertainment device and a creative device all at once.

Why it did not take over

The tragedy of many forward-looking computers is that being right too early can look very similar to being wrong. The FM Towns was impressive, but it was also expensive and tied to a specific Japanese ecosystem. Its strengths made it special, but they also made it harder to sell beyond its natural audience.

NEC’s PC-98 platform had enormous momentum in Japan. Businesses, schools and software publishers were already invested in it. Competing against that kind of installed base was difficult, even with better multimedia features. Meanwhile, the global IBM-compatible PC world was moving towards standardisation. As Windows grew in importance, the industry began to absorb many of the ideas that had made the FM Towns stand out.

In other words, the mainstream PC gradually became more like the FM Towns, but without needing to be an FM Towns. CD-ROM drives became common. Sound cards improved. Graphics accelerated. Windows gave users a shared visual environment. Developers followed the largest market. Fujitsu’s machine had helped point towards the future, but the future arrived through cheaper, more standard hardware.

The Marty and the living-room question

In 1993, Fujitsu took the idea further with the FM Towns Marty, a console-like system based on the FM Towns platform. It was one of those machines that now looks fascinating precisely because it did not quite fit the categories of its time. Was it a console? Was it a computer in disguise? Was it an attempt to bring CD-based PC entertainment into the living room before the market was ready?

The Marty suggested that Fujitsu understood something important: the boundary between computers and entertainment devices was beginning to weaken. A machine connected to a television, running CD-based software and drawing from a computer library, anticipated later conversations about multimedia consoles, living-room PCs and hybrid entertainment systems.

Commercially, the Marty remained a niche product. Historically, it is far more interesting than its sales figures suggest. Like the FM Towns itself, it asked a question that would define much of the next thirty years of consumer technology: where does the computer end and the entertainment system begin?

A cult machine in the preservation age

Today, the FM Towns survives as a cult object. Collectors prize it because it is rare, technically distinctive and deeply tied to a particular moment in Japanese computing. It is not just another old PC. It represents a path the industry might have taken more visibly: a world where multimedia computing was designed into the machine from the start rather than bolted on later.

Keeping these machines alive is not simple. Original CD-ROM drives fail. Floppy drives become unreliable. Capacitors age. Proprietary parts are difficult to replace. Many surviving systems need patient restoration, and the knowledge required to maintain them increasingly lives in enthusiast communities, repair notes, emulator projects and preservation forums.

Emulation has become especially important. Projects such as Tsugaru have helped make FM Towns software accessible to people who may never own the original hardware. That matters because preservation is not only about saving machines. It is about saving the experience of using them: the sound of the games, the look of the interface, the rhythm of loading a CD, the feeling of a computer designed with a different set of priorities.

What the FM Towns teaches us

The FM Towns did not become the dominant Japanese PC. It did not conquer the global market. It did not turn Fujitsu into the company that defined home multimedia computing for the 1990s. Measured only by market share, it was a specialist machine with a passionate following.

But market share is not the only way to measure importance.

Some computers matter because they sell in huge numbers. Others matter because they reveal the future before the rest of the industry is ready to see it. The FM Towns belongs in the second group. It recognised that personal computing would not remain confined to text, numbers and office work. It saw that computers would become places for games, music, images, video, education and creativity. That vision was correct. The timing was simply difficult.

More than three decades later, the FM Towns feels less like a failed experiment and more like an early draft of modern computing. It was expensive, idiosyncratic and unmistakably Japanese, but it was also generous in imagination. It believed a computer could be richer, warmer and more exciting than the beige boxes of its day. In 1989, that made it unusual. Today, it makes it look prophetic.